Her next visit was after a lapse of three weeks.  She had again been suffering from a slight illness, and her pallor alarmed Hilliard.  Again she began with talk of Patty Ringrose.

“Do you know, there’s really a chance that we may see her before long!  She’ll have a holiday at Easter, from the Thursday night to Monday night, and I have all but got her to promise that she’ll come over here.  Wouldn’t it be fun to let her see the Black Country?  You remember her talk about it.  I could get her a room, and if it’s at all bearable weather, we would all have a day somewhere.  Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Yes; but I should greatly prefer a day with you alone.”

“Oh, of course, the time is coming for that, Would you let us come here one day?”

With a persistence not to be mistaken Eve avoided all intimate topics; at the same time her manner grew more cordial.  Through February and March, she decidedly improved in health.  Hilliard saw her seldom, but she wrote frequent letters, and their note was as that of her conversation, lively, all but sportive.  Once again she had become a mystery to her lover; he pondered over her very much as in the days when they were newly acquainted.  Of one thing he felt but too well assured.  She did not love him as he desired to be loved.  Constant she might be, but it was the constancy of a woman unaffected with ardent emotion.  If she granted him her lips they had no fervour respondent to his own; she made a sport of it, forgot it as soon as possible.  Upon Hilliard’s vehement nature this acted provocatively; at times he was all but frenzied with the violence of his sensual impulses.  Yet Eve’s control of him grew more assured the less she granted of herself; a look, a motion of her lips, and he drew apart, quivering but subdued.  At one such moment he exclaimed: 

“You had better not come here at all.  I love you too insanely.”

Eve looked at him, and silently began to shed tears.  He implored her pardon, prostrated himself, behaved in a manner that justified his warning.  But Eve stifled the serious drama of the situation, and forced him to laugh. with her.

In these days architectural study made little way.

Patty Ringrose was coming for the Easter holidays.  She would arrive on Good Friday.  “As the weather is so very bad still,” wrote Eve to Hilliard, “will you let us come to see you on Saturday?  Sunday may be better for an excursion of some sort.”

And thus it was arranged.  Hilliard made ready his room to receive the fair visitors, who would come at about eleven in the morning.  As usual nowadays, he felt discontented, but, after all, Patty’s influence might be a help to him, as it had been in worse straits.

CHAPTER XXI

To-day he had the house to himself.  The corn-dealers shop was closed, as on a Sunday; the optician and his blind wife had locked up their rooms and were spending Easter-tide, it might be hoped, amid more cheerful surroundings.  Hilliard sat with his door open, that he might easily hear the knock which announced his guests at the entrance below.